World building at The Thread House Academy

Trees, flowers and buildings...

We are about to launch Year 4 of our online teaching Academy over at The Thread House this week.

For newer readers The Thread House is Karen Lewis, Lynne Goldsworthy and myself. We have been working together for 10 years now! We began by organising retreats and then switched to mainly online events during covid. In 2023 we launched our Academy, a year long programme of online classes with a new subject every month.

And now we are ready to launch Year 4! We always divide the year into 3 terms and each term has a theme. This year our themes are ‘Trees’, ‘Flowers’ and ‘Buildings’, in other words we are creating a whole new Thread House World!

For the Tree term I will be teaching my Moon Trees class. This will encompass all my Moon Tree inspired projects from small panels that can be used as coasters or framed pictures to large trees that can become Temperature Tree Quilts or a Family Tree like this new panel (above) that I have created especially for the class.

Or why not make the full Moon Trees quilt!? I create these appliqué trees by ‘drawing’ freehand with scissors and then turning my edges under as I go. I’m really looking forward to sharing this process in detail with all our students.

For each 4 month term we teach one class each and then do something different with the ‘extra’ month. For the first Academy year we created Masterclasses on Appliqué, Quilting and Binding (with these all still available to buy as single classes from our store). We are returning to this idea for Year 4 with 3 new Masterclasses and this time it’s all about the Acronyms with workshops on HST, FPP and EPP.

For the second term our focus is on flowers and instead of another quilt I have created this Lotus Flower Sewing Bag.

This takes the basic Japanese lotus flower lunch bag idea (which I have been making for many years) and improves it. First I have added four more petals for extra prettiness.

And then inside I have inserted a quilted fabric tray where you can organise your thread and notions. It includes a scissors pocket, an area for needles and a magnetic flower pin cushion (which you can also use to collect stray pins!).

I am especially pleased with my thread storage using elastic and buttons which not only stores them safely but you can also spool away the thread when you are using it. Check out this reel on Instagram which shows this in action. You can also use the pockets around the sides of the tray to organise your projects (it’s great for EPP).

And if that’s not enough I will also share this mini version which can include embellishment and is perfect as a ‘binding’ or ‘mending’ pouch.

Next up in Term 3 we tackle buildings and I am back in my comfort zone with some improv piecing. I am returning to one of my oldest workshops ‘Improv Houses’ with this new Fussy Cut Cabins class.

I taught a version of this for many years in my Edinburgh ‘myBearpaw’ studio and when I sold this business and retired most of my classes I made quilts with all the class samples including this improv house quilt below.

This quilt above was donated to the Siblings Together charity and shows all the different houses we will make in the new online class from simple sheds and two story houses to the more intricate and 3-dimensional cabin shown below.

I love fussy cutting fun things for the windows and the advantage of improv piecing means you can make the windows the right size for your motifs and finally use all those long hoarded Heather Ross or Alexander Henry fabrics (like the owls and gnomes shown here).

I plan to make a whole quilt of cabins and as this class won’t come up until next March I have plenty of time to add to these 4 blocks during the year ahead.

If you don’t want a whole quilt of cabins you could create one using the full range of improv buildings like my original above. Or just a one block cushion like my ‘Owl Cabin’ at the top of the page.

As well as my three classes Lynne and Karen are teaching their own amazing workshops. We are so excited about our offering this year! Do check out all of these along with reading more about my three on our new classes page…

You can buy either an Annual Pass or a Term 1 Pass when the Academy Year 4 launches on Thursday. And we will have a 25% off Early Bird discount from then until Monday night (27th) when our Taster Weekend ends.

If you’re not interested in trees but really like the sound of the flowers term then you can wait until later in the year and buy term 2. Or if you just like my Improv Cabin class you can wait until next February and buy this as just one single class. A new class is available every month and all can be bought as single classes (if you don’t want to commit to a full term or year).

All our workshops are pre-recorded videos that come with Lifetime access. This means you can take the class at your own convenience and watch the videos as many times as you like. And if you sign up to our Annual or Term Passes you also get to join our community platform and attend two Zoom sessions with us every month.

Have you signed up to our FREE Taster Weekend yet? This is a wonderful way to try out our Academy before committing, or why not just enjoy a freebie workshop with us!

I can’t wait to show you all how to make my Dream Birds Coin Purse!

The Taster Weekend starts next Saturday at 10am. See you then!!